A female astronaut with a Jewish father who fought in Israel’s War of Independence has said she will be taking an Israeli flag with her to the International Space Station later this year.
Jessica Meir, who has joint US-Swedish citizenship, will be co-piloting a Soyuz spacecraft launching from Kazakhstan in September, just a few days before Rosh Hashana.
The mission, which is due to take six months, will see the three-person crew performing a range of different experiments aboard the ISS to test the effects of space on humans.
Ms Meir, 41, whose father was Jewish and mother was Christian, told JTA that she had grown up identifying as Jewish and had attended a synagogue in Maine, near where they lived.
